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Strong Month for Web 2.0 Financing

Published
by
admin
on December 1, 2009
in News and Opinion
. 0 Comments

Outlook_web2_weekly

Fewer but larger deals push November over $200 Million in financing.

November 2009 is a month that saw 10 financings in excess of $15 million each, plus the $400 million acquisition of PlayFish by Electronic Arts. This despite the number of deals tracking well below the roughly 25 deals per month that our Web 2.0 universe has generated in 2009 to date. Regarding the higher value deals, we observe two clear sector trends: investment in gaming companies approaching the market from a social networks perspective (e.g. PlayFish, Playdom, Zynga), and increased interest in Chinese online media companies (Ku6.com, Phoenix New Media, Qunar.com).

WHILE FUNDING ACTIVITY IS HEATING UP…

November – seventh month to close above $200 million in 2009: Total transaction value in the Web 2.0 universe for November ended at $203.4 million. The number of financings increased to 18, averaging $11.3 million each (vs. an average of $11.9 million over 17 deals as of last week). In comparison, total capital raised in October was $171.3 million, averaging $6.3 million (27 deals); September was $232.8 million, averaging $9.0 million (26 deals); and August was $221.6 million, averaging $7.6 million (29 deals).

… PUBLIC MARKETS PULL BACK

Market pull-back continues: Nineteen companies in our universe had positive stock price performances over the past week (for stocks with prices greater than $1), while 28 companies showed negative 1-week returns.

Please feel free to forward the Weekly, blog it, post it, tweet it etc. Note that prior versions are available on the web at www.scribd.com/dapshore.

The HTC Magic with Google Android reviewed

Published
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Kyle
on April 17, 2009
in News and Opinion
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The HTC Magic was announced at Mobile World Congress this year and it’s been getting a lot of buzz. It’s a shame that more Android phones aren’t on the market but the few that have come out are looking very slick.

The HTC Magic is the newest phone designed on the Google Android platform. The device has many of the same features that the HTC G1 is packing, obviously because they’re both running Android. Why choose this device over the G1? It’s all in the handset design. The G1 is a little more bulky and if having a phone that fits nicely into your pocket is a big priority, then you should consider buy the HTC Magic instead.

The HTC Magic is expected to retail between 99 and 199 Euros and will launch initially on Vodafone. Although Europeans will have the first crack at the device, T-Mobile is expected to pick it up in the near future where it will likely be called the G2.

For a full review of the HTC Magic, check out DAP’s full review of the device.

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Nokia 6700 review, specifications and impressions

Published
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Kyle
on March 30, 2009
in News and Opinion
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The Nokia 6700 is a 5 megapixel camera phone that is the latest Series 40 device by Nokia. The device has some nice specs with an autofocus camera, GPS navigation with Nokia Maps and the Nokia WebKit Open Source Browser which was previously only available for Series 60 handsets.

The device is fairly thin at only 11mm but there is a lot inside it. The device supports both quad-band GSM and tri-band UMTS networks (plus HSDPA up to 10 Mbps). Also built into the device is an accelerometer which for tap-for-clock and turn-to-mute features.

The Nokia 6700 will be shipping with a 1GB microSD card and will be available in the usual metallic colors: Silver metallic, Matte metallic, Black metallic, and Brown metallic.

Expect the phone to retail for 235 euro in Q3 2009.

Top 10 Camera Phones

Published
by
Kyle
on March 4, 2009
in News
. 4 Comments

Samsung Memoir T929 (T-Mobile, 8.0 MP camera, QVGA 240×400) – Black
America’s first 8 megapixel camera features a 16x digital zoom and xenon flash. The TouchWiz Samsung Memoir features auto-focus, geo-tagging, anti-shake, easy upload to a variety of platforms, and can even record up to one hour of video.

Motorola Zine ZN5 (T-Mobile, 5.0MP camera with Kodak lenses, QVGA 240×320) – Black
Designed by Kodak, the surprisingly slim Motorola Zine ZN5 packs a 5 megapixel camera with xenon flash, auto-focus and more, as well as Kodak’s Perfect Touch and other editing abilities.

Samsung Behold T919 (T-Mobile, 5.0MP, QVGA 240×320) – Espresso, Light Rose
Predecessor to the Samsung Memoir, the 5 megapixel Samsung Behold was the first to feature Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface, with its easy-to-use features, LED flash and an expandable memory up to 16 GB.

Samsung Omnia (Verizon Wireless, 5.0MP, VGA 480×640) – Black
Featuring Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro, the 5 megapixel Samsung Omnia’s 8GB memory (expandable to a whooping 24GB with addition of a 16GB microSD card) is as a productive as it is fun.

Sony Ericsson W760a (AT&T, 3.2MP, QVGA 240×320) – Black, Red, Silver
The 3.2 megapixel Sony Ericsson W760a is a slider-style phone with multiple shot modes and easy uploading of photos to the web on the nation’s fastest 3G network.

BlackBerry Storm (Verizon Wireless, 3.2MP, QVGA 240×320) – Black
The touch-screen BlackBerry Storm moves beyond the workplace with a 3.2 megapixel camera, including LED flash, face detection and editing tools.

HTC Fuze (AT&T, 3.2MP, VGA 480×640) – Black
With new 3D TouchFLO, the 3.2 megapixel HTC Fuze is intuitive to use and easy to customize for business and pleasure. Auto-focus and editing tools ensure a great shot everytime.

HTC Touch Pro (Sprint, 3.2MP, CIF 288×352) – Black
With a 3.2 megapixel camera, the slide-out HTC Touch Pro for Sprint has a full QWERTY keyboard and the Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro that business users need while providing the entertainment features everyone wants.

LG Dare (Verizon Wireless, 3.2MP, VGA 480×640) – Black
A reasonably-priced iPhone competitor, the LG Dare has a 3.2 megapixel camera with features including face detection, SmartPic technology and editing tools. Besides camcorder noise reduction, the LG Dare is the first American phone to be able to record high-speed video and play it back in slow-motion.

Samsung Eternity A867 (AT&T, 3.2MP, QCIF 144×176) – Black
Featuring a popular touch-screen with vibration response, the Samsung Eternity has a 3.2 megapixel for not only on-the-go photos and video, but also AT&T’s exclusive Video Share – the cutting edge of video calling.

This was a guest post by Warren who normally covers mobile phones at DAP. Grab the RSS feed for his daily updates.

Free trial - Vayyoo reinvents email for BlackBerry

Published
by
Kyle
on March 4, 2009
in News
. 0 Comments

We’ve been talking a lot about Vayyoo for a few reasons: we love their product and we’ve been playing Settlers of Catan with their director of marketing on a pretty regular basis.

Here are some old articles about them that tells the story of the product’s progression.

Today Vayyoo has launched vPost to the public at a one-time purchase price of $9.95 with a free two-week trial.

Check them out in the store here.

vPost is an app that lets you capture and email any combination of Pictures, Video, Audio Notes, Text & GPS location using an extremely powerful and simple interface.

Once you capture any combination of media you can send it via email to friends, family, colleagues, blogs and social networks. Without vPost it can take over 5 minutes to compose an email with 2 pictures, an audio note, and GPS location. With vPost this task can be done in less than a minute with no hassles. You can try vPost today and start sending rich-media to anyone and everyone!

Use it for anything:
- File a life experience by emailing it to yourself
- Share moments with close friends while it’s happening (near real-time)
- Publish media to Facebook, Blogger, Wordpress, Flickr, Picasa, etc. and share with you online communities
- Annotate pictures with a voice recording of what’s actually happened
- Send accidents, act’s heroism, & other newsworthy events in to news agencies (CNN, BBC, etc.)
-Update Twitter via services like posterous.com, pixelpipe.com, and utterli.com
- Send vPost voice & video messages to each other
- Send your friends your exact location in near real time.

Vayyoo has assured us a that a storm version will be available soon.

Vayyoo has setup a vPost website at www.getvpost.com where they have a FAQ, contact info, and links to their Twitter account.

Comment with what you think of the app!

We’ll be sending an email to some of the comments with free license keys.

Again, you can see the app here.

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How to tether your iPhone or G1 to your laptop

Published
by
Kyle
on February 16, 2009
in News
. 2 Comments

Tethering your device is really helpful if you like to work around the city on your laptop, but your city’s WiFi situation is a little bleak.

When tethering, make sure you aren’t seeding any torrents because although most carriers offer a decent ‘all you can eat’ data plan, torrents can quickly put you over the limit.

What You’ll Need:

• For G1: USB cable, Tetherbot App, Android SDK, Firefox
• For iPhone: iPhoneModem app, Jailbroken phone

G1 Tether

Graham Stewart wrote a great guide and app for tethering which can be found here. This app isn’t a true modem tether, so you’ll have to browse with Firefox (what else would you use?).

1. Go here on your G1’s browser and install the Tetherbot app. If unknown sources are not enabled on your phone (under Settings -> Applications -> Unknown Sources) do that first.

2. Turn on USB Debugging under Settings -> Applications -> Development and connect your phone via USB.

3. Get your Android SDK set up. If you’re on Windows, you’ll need to download and install a driver.

4. On your phone, fire up the Tetherbot app and tap the “Start Socks” button.

5. Now, the SDK incantation. In a terminal window on Mac or a run window on Windows, navigate to the “tools” folder within your SDK directory and then type the following:

Mac:

./adb forward tcp:1080 tcp:1080

Windows:

adb forward tcp:1080 tcp:1080

6. Now, in Firefox, go to Options -> Advanced -> Network, and click to configure how Firefox connects to the Internet. In the window that pops up, choose “Manual proxy configuration” and clear out everything that might be there. Under SOCKS host, type “localhost” and change the port to 1080. Hit OK, and you should be in business. Easy right?

iPhone Tether

This tether will require you to jailbreak your iPhone. Although tethering is incredibly sweet, I’m not a huge fan of jailbreaking the iPhone. It has been my experience that these sorts of hacks really degenerate the quality of the software over the long run and sometimes it’s best to stick to what you’re given.

Here are instructions to jailbreak your phone.

The instructions and app I’m using can be found at iPhoneModem.de and it is completely free. This is a Mac-only app and set of instructions, but Windows users can use PDANet for their tethering needs.

1. Once you’re jailbroken, open up Cydia and install the package called “iPhone Modem zsrelay” - you can find it by searching “modem.” Also install OpenSSH - find it by searching “SSH.” BossPrefs is also recommended, so you can make sure SSH is running.

2. Download the iPhoneModem.de helper app and run it, and go to “Settings…” under the little iPhone icon that just appeared in the status bar.

3. Fill in the following fields:

IP-Address of Mac: Leave the default value (192.168.100.1)
Password of Mac: Your admin password
WLAN Name: The name of the ad-hoc network that will be created - your choice
WLAN Password: It must be 13 characters-your choice as long as it’s 13
SOCKS Port: Leave default (9999)
iPhone root Password: alpine (as long as you’re running 2.x firmware)
iPhone Mac Address: Found under Settings - General - About - make sure you use the wi-fi MAC address.

4. Once your config is saved, go to “start connection” and follow the prompts. Your Mac will create an ad-hoc network, which you will then join with your iPhone (make sure you get an IP address on your iPhone before continuing). Everything should go smoothly, and voila, you’re tethered!

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How to turn your iPod Touch into an iPhone

Published
by
Kyle
on February 10, 2009
in Customization and News
. 1 Comment

Although this isn’t the first time we’ve heard of a product like this, it’s good to know that people are still plugging away at turning the iPod Touch into an iPhone. Back in December, we heard about a company called Truphone, which also provides VoIP services for your smartphone.

In theory, having a VoIP device sounds good. The problem is the reliability of the service has consistently been lackluster on mobile. I’ve yet to try a service that can provide the sort of reliability you would expect from Vonage ported over to mobile.

“With JAJAH, consumers would only need a Wi-Fi connection, no SIM card or contract. JAJAH’s IP communications platform gives its partners everything they need to launch the service immediately. That includes the application itself and the entire suite of management services from termination of calls, quality control, billing and processing of payments in 200 countries around the world.”

Personally, I’m an iPhone user so I don’t have much of a need for this, but I’d love to hear your thoughts if you’ve tried it.

Check out JAJAH here.

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Sony Ericsson C510 made more affordable with new features

Published
by
Kyle
on January 15, 2009
in Hardware and News
. 0 Comments



The Sony Ericsson C510 was recently made official. The C510 is the latest in the Sony Ericsson Cyber-Shot family and is supposed to be a smooth improvement over previous editions. This new model, is expected to be a little more affordable and yet offer the same quality cameraphone technology that is expected from Cyber-Shot.

A new feature arriving on the C510 is the introduction of Smile Shutter. This new feature allows the user to capture the smiles of freinds and family effortlessly by detecting the smile and immediately taking the photo.

Finally! Sony has managed to end the saying of the word “CHEESE!”

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The ultimate social network phone - the INQ1

Published
by
Kyle
on January 13, 2009
in Hardware, News and Opinion
. 0 Comments

The INQ1 is more than just a phone with a mobile web browser to view Facebook. The device is dedicated to social networking and Facebook, being one of the largest, is an obvious focus. The phone will also keep you connected with your other social networks using a system of widgets and shortcuts to all your communication means. An added benefit to this uber-communication device, is that it is in the midrange of handset prices. So if you’re looking for a device that isn’t your standard expensive smartphone, but will keep you in touch will all your friends and relatives, this could be your device.

Nokia 5800 Xpress Music reviewed

Published
by
Kyle
on January 13, 2009
in Hardware and News
. 1 Comment

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is clearly designed for the music lover who isn’t interested in any other feature. You might say to this person, “would you like QWERTY?” and they’ll just be like “is that a band? Because music is where it’s at.” The 5800 is the world’s first Symbian S60 5th Edition touchscreen mobile phone and Nokia’s first proper attempt at a dedicated touchscreen handset. Although I wouldn’t consider it Nokia’s flagship touchscreen, that is obviously the N97. In any case, the 5800 is shaping up to be a really decent phone.

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